Karen Sheila Gillan (born November 28, 1987) is a Scottish actress, best known for playing Amy Pond, the first companion of Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor in Doctor Who, having previously appeared as a soothsayer in an earlier story, "The Fires of Pompeii".

In September, 2012, she and Arthur Darvill's episodes of series 7 of Doctor Who aired, where they left in the fifth episode. Technically, their characters "left" the TARDIS in the late series 6 episode, "The God Complex", but they still managed to appear in the next 8 episodes in a row until they no longer could. At the time she departed Karen was the single longest lasting Companion on the 2005 revival of the show with 2½ seasons. As Amy Pond, Karen had appeared in more televised stories (not episodes, stories), 28, than any other companion in the show's entire history at the time. Both these records have since been eclipsed by Jenna Coleman.

Tropes associated with this actress include:

Bald Woman: For her role in Guardians of the Galaxy, she shaved her head. Funnily enough, this meant she and Matt Smith were both wearing wigs during her cameo in his final episode. note Smith had shaved his head for his role in the Ryan Gosling film Lost River. Also Smith regretted on Twitter that neither of them thought to see how they'd look in each other's wigs.

Butt-Monkey: All three members of the Who cast described their off-screen relationship as "Two big brothers teasing their younger sister." On Confidential, she showed where Matt scribbled all over her set chair, including "Wide Load" in the seat.

Confusion Fu: She participated in an All-Star Celebrity Bowling game against Chris Hardwick's Nerdist team while promoting Doctor Who on BBC America. Since bowling isn't all that popular in the UK, and since Karen can out-Klutz Matt and Arthur at times, she shocked everybody when her "Throw, scream, and hope" approach to bowling actually worked and gave her one of the highest scores in the game.

Even those that don't particularly like Amy the character (mostly due to some of Amy's Bitch in Sheep's Clothing tendencies, especially toward Rory) still like Karen the person (who has really endeared herself to fans by being very sweet, polite, and more than a little dorky).

In Guardians of the Galaxy, she's playing Nebula, a character who can easily be summed as a psychopathic serial killer assassin with absolutely no moral center and daddy issues the size of the planet Neptune. To say it's a "departure" from her usual roles is to totally understate the situation.

She's Got Legs: famously, to the point that where the Doctor was riffing nicknames in the Oval Office, she was referred to as 'The Legs' (along with 'The Nose' and 'Mrs Robinson'). Also very much played up with her role as a video game avatar played by a nerdy girl in Jumanji.

Statuesque Stunner: About 5'11''. They had to redesign the Daleks because of it (they were originally designed to match height with Billie Piper, who was about six inches shorter.)

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy